The Social World

Tag: Ukraine war

  • Will the Russia peace deal backfire on Trump?

    Will the Russia peace deal backfire on Trump?

    Kyiv

    The rumor reverberating around Kyiv is that the FBI has been leaning on Ukrainian anti-corruption police to investigate Zelensky’s inner circle in order to force him to swallow the bitter US peace deal. Trump, as they say, has put the screws, or the feds, on Zelensky.

    The National Anti-Corruption Bureau – which is unravelling a $100 million war-profiteering scandal that has implicated many of Zelensky’s closest political allies – has denied the accusation point blank, and there’s not a single shred of evidence that it is true.

    Nevertheless, Mykola Kniazhytskyi, a member of the opposition in the Ukrainian parliament and hardly a friend of Zelensky, told me, “A lot of people are saying anti-corruption bodies are taking orders from the United States to undermine Zelensky, to make him do the deal.”

    That the rumor exists and has gained currency within the country crystallizes how Ukrainians have come to view their relationship with America: where once they looked east to find a belligerent state using its secret police to try to control their country, now they look west. 

    The rumor also reveals how Ukrainians regard democracy and its guardian institutions: they don’t much care for them right now. In a time of war, the fight against corruption is subordinate to survival. It’s heretical in Ukraine to suggest that the country might benefit from elections to give its leader a democratic mandate and a stronger arm to bargain with. Elections would be complicated to stage during, no doubt, but they were managed during the US Civil War in 1864, so why not now? Ukrainians – even those who despise Zelensky – shrug at the suggestion and say, first, defeat the existential threat.    

    However, the rumor does convey one probable truth: that Trump is desperate to make a peace deal happen at almost any cost, as he has been promising the world he would end the war for years. 

    The proposed deal, which in its current state would codify Putin’s maximalist demands, would be a political death sentence if Zelensky were to accept it. Russian would become an official state language, the Ukrainian army (already too small to fend off Russian aggression) would be slashed by 60 percent, land in the Donbas – as yet unconquered – would be given away and many foreign weapons and all foreign troops would be banned from holding the peace. 

    “It is a plan for the capitulation of Ukraine, agreed by the US,” a Ukrainian party leader told me. There is neither a majority in the parliament for the deal, nor in the country.  

    Yet there are some who are cautiously optimistic. They dare to think that politics is back. First, the anti-corruption investigation has applied defibrillator paddles to the moribund parliament, shocking it back into life. Deputies are demanding the head of Andriy Yermak – Zelensky’s chief of staff who is accused of siphoning off funds earmarked for building defenses to protect Ukraine’s energy infrastructure. If he goes, it is hoped a full-scale clean-out of dead wood will follow. Not exactly a general election, but at least a political change. So far Zelensky is refusing to bow to pressure and fire Yermak. This has only increased speculation that Zelensky himself may have something to hide. 

    There would be necessary compromises on both sides, but the 28-point plan might actually work. It is a starting point for serious negotiations.

    A senior source close to Zelensky, who worked on the failed Russian-Ukraine peace deal in 2022 told me, “Trump is the only person in the world right now who wants to end the war. We choose to fight rather than surrender. Putin has his own plans to continue. China wants to supply both sides. Europe wants us to fight the Russians so they don’t have to. Only Trump is serious about peace.”

    But how much is the famously conciliatory Vladimir Putin really willing to compromise on? He has the whip hand. His troops are on the march, slowly taking land in the Donbas and the southern flank Zaporizhzhia. He is paralyzing the Ukrainian energy grid with strikes, plunging the country into cold and darkness as winter bites. (As I write this, my Kyiv hotel is briefly hit by a blackout before the backup generator kicks in. Across the city people access an app to find out their daily allowance of electricity, usually three hours in the morning, three at lunch and three in the evening.)

    Trump hopes that his new sanctions will help bring Putin to heel, even though the old ones didn’t really bite and history tells us that Russians are no strangers to suffering and dying for their country – and now they have state propaganda telling them they are fighting a just war against a Nazi threat.

    Zelensky has cautiously welcomed the plan, saying he is ready for “honest work” with the US to “bring about a just end to the war.” He said he will speak to Trump soon to discuss it. 

    The devil, as always, is in the detail. The document states that Ukraine will be given “reliable security guarantees,” but some commentators have questioned if that is possible if NATO troops are banned from Ukrainian soil, certain classifications of weapons are forfeited and the Ukrainian army is effectively neutered. Sources close to the president’s office, however, believe this issue can be circumvented by having rapid reaction NATO forces stationed in Poland and also by building large arms warehouse in Poland with vast stores of weapons that can be accessed in an emergency. If similar creative solutions can be found for other issues there is a glimmer of hope.

    However, if a good deal cannot be struck there may be danger for Trump. So far, many Americans have ignored the media’s attempts to characterize his high-risk strategy of engaging with both sides as appeasement, or that he is in the pocket of Putin. They understand that you don’t make peace with your enemies – and that sometimes heads need to be knocked together. The process is infinitesimally less important than the outcome. Yet the benefit of the doubt they have afforded Trump may be withdrawn if it appears that he is trying to ram a capitulation deal down the neck of the plucky Ukrainian nation standing up to the world’s number one bully.

    Zelensky can’t sell the current proposal to his nation, nor can Trump sell it to his. Of course, Trump can always simply walk away if it falls apart and blame everyone else, which is possibly the most likely outcome at this stage. Yet it may yet turn out that in even brokering this proposed pact, Trump has become party to a Faustian bargain.

  • Putin thinks time is on his side

    Putin thinks time is on his side

    Very well then – war. That is the bottom line of Vladimir Putin’s response to Donald Trump’s latest attempts at mediating an end to Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. In August, Putin rejected the peace deal that Trump lined up in Alaska. Now, the Kremlin has scuttled the White House’s plan for a summit in Budapest by insisting that Russia’s demands for Ukrainian demilitarization and “de-nazification” remain in force. Clearly, the Russian President still believes that he can win the war on the battlefield – and terrorize Ukraine’s civilians.

    What is Putin’s plan? Why does he still believe that Russia can chart a path to victory even as Washington unveils painful new sanctions on the country’s two largest oil exporters, Ukrainian drones have begun smashing up oil refineries deep inside Russia and a summer of heavy fighting in the Donbas has moved the front line forward by a handful of miles at huge cost in blood?

    First and foremost, Putin is gambling that time is on his side – backed by Russia’s cruel allies General Winter and General Frost. Massive missile and drone attacks on Ukraine’s energy and transport infrastructure are aimed at making as many cities as possible uninhabitable as temperatures drop. It’s not a new strategy. But the increased scale and accuracy of Russian strikes over recent months will make this winter the coldest that Ukraine has faced. According to one senior official source, Germany’s security services have already warned Berlin to brace for a fresh influx of Ukrainian refugees.

    Like many elements in this apparently deadlocked conflict, the livability of a city can radically change in a tipping-point moment such as the destruction of an electricity substation or gas pipeline. Early last month, a series of catastrophic hits on Kyiv’s power grid left half the capital without power. Some areas waited a week for it to be restored. Smaller cities with fewer air defenses are suffering worse. “My hometown Kherson is turning into a ghost city,” reports Iuliia Mendel, former press secretary to Volodymyr Zelensky. “Relentless Russian shelling has driven out nearly four out of five residents – just 65,000 remain from the 300,000 who once called it home.”

    Putin’s forces are targeting other humanitarian essentials, too. In late October, Russian missiles scored a series of direct hits on the Kyiv warehouse of Ukraine’s second-largest pharmaceutical distributor, Optima Pharm, destroying an estimated $100 million of medicines.

    Whether a dark winter will precipitate a morale crisis in Ukraine – and a crisis in Zelensky’s legitimacy – remains to be seen. But a new wave of Ukrainian refugees would certainly stress European political resolve. Forcing a mass winter exodus of Ukrainian women and children (military-age men have been banned from leaving Ukraine since the start of the war) is the Kremlin’s ruthless way of weaponizing civilian suffering and testing the limits of Europe’s support.

    Poland has recently suspended benefits to many Ukrainian refugees, and leaders in some countries – such as Lithuania and Germany – have begun arguing that Ukrainian men should be sent home to address the country’s recruitment needs.

    On the front line in the Donbas and around the edges of the Kharkiv province, the apparent stalemate may not be as stable as it appears. Russian progress toward encircling the “fortress cities” of western Donbas has been painfully slow and increasingly bloody. Analysis by Britain’s Ministry of Defence suggests that this year has been Russia’s deadliest of the war: 100,000 Russian soldiers have been killed from a total of nearly 250,000 since 2022. But if Russia’s forces succeed in taking Pokrovsk in the north of Donetsk province, then the 50-kilometer fortress line of Slovyansk, Kramatorsk and Konstantinovka becomes vulnerable to outflanking from both north and south.

    Ukrainian efforts to find manpower are becoming increasingly critical, even more so than weapons procurement or missile defense. Every month, Ukraine mobilizes 30,000 soldiers. Army press gangs often use brutal methods to snatch unwilling recruits off the streets and bundle them into buses. But, admits Ukrainian MP Fedir Venislavskyi – a member of Zelensky’s party and of the Committee on National Security, Defense and Intelligence – up to 20,000 soldiers will desert or go absent without leave over the same time period.

    That leaves only 10,000 fresh recruits, most of them conscripts. Ukraine’s military blogging sites are full of officers complaining about manpower shortages. “Our frontline units operate at about 50 percent strength,” Ukrainian army Major Yegor Checherinda recently told the website Voennoe Delo. Bohdan Krotevych, a former Azov regiment officer, complains that “frontline units currently operate at only about a third of their required strength.”

    But the most important arms race isn’t playing out in the trenches of the Donbas, but in the skies above the Russian and Ukrainian heartlands. Attacks by 800 Russian drones and missiles a night have become commonplace. Until recently, up to 80 percent of these weapons were typically downed by air defenses. But Russian glide bombs – created by attaching wings, rocket motors and guidance systems to 500-kilo conventional bombs – are much harder to hit and have a 200-kilometer range. Over recent weeks, Russia has significantly increased glide-bomb use, with devastating effect.

    Ukraine has unveiled a homemade cruise missile called the Flamingo, with a warhead weighing more than a ton and a range of 1,500 kilometers. Since August, long-range Ukrainian drones have begun regularly striking Russian oil refineries and arms factories. Kyiv can use domestically built missiles to strike targets deep inside Russia without restrictions from western allies.

    Russia’s economy – in particular its oil and gas production and export – has become Putin’s most dangerous vulnerability both militarily and diplomatically. Publicly available maps of Russia’s pipeline network clearly show that just two dozen key nodes and pumping stations are crucial to the whole system. Many of these – through quirks of geography and Soviet-era planning – lie within striking distance of Ukraine’s drones and missiles.

    The Biden administration held Kyiv back from crippling Russia’s oil industry for fear of causing a spike in global prices – and, for the same reason, never directly banned or sanctioned Russian oil. Under Trump, that’s changed. Recently announced US sanctions on Lukoil and Rosneft, Russia’s two biggest oil companies, could squeeze 65 percent of Moscow’s exports. These announcements seem to have caught Putin off guard. Like a helicopter trying to dodge heat-seeking missiles, the Kremlin’s response has been to fire off hot propaganda chaff left and right.

    For example, in response to Trump’s announcement, Putin hastily revealed a new super weapon: the Burevestnik, a cruise missile powered by an onboard nuclear reactor that can stay aloft for days and carry nuclear warheads. The unveiling looked a lot like Putin’s announcement last November of a new model of the Oreshnik hypersonic nuclear missile. The Kremlin believes both weapons showcase Russia’s military-industrial complex – but more importantly, their rollout serves as a not-so-subtle message to the world that Russia is a nuclear power and shouldn’t be messed with.

    The Kremlin also immediately dispatched Kirill Dmitriev – the Harvard Business School-educated former Goldman Sachs banker who heads Russia’s sovereign wealth fund – to Washington. Putin believes that Dmitriev, with his excellent English and extensive US contacts, is an ideal Trump-whisperer. Dmitriev has been busy talking up the grand possibilities of US-Russian business cooperation on Arctic oil exploration and rare-earths mining during a series of meetings with Trump’s envoy Steve Witkoff. But Dmitriev’s welcome seems to be wearing thin. No top member of Trump’s team met with him publicly during this last visit, and Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent called him a “Russian propagandist.”

    According to Sir William Browder, once the largest foreign portfolio investor in Russia, “the fact that Putin dispatched Dmitriev to Washington within minutes of the US sanctioning Lukoil and Rosneft shows just how rattled Putin is.” But Dmitriev’s message to Washington showed little sign of Russian willingness to compromise. He mostly hyped up the power of the Burevestnik. He told Fox News and CNN that Putin considers Ukraine an existential threat to Russia and that he won’t back down.

    Ukraine and Russia are in a war of attrition – and that is a war Putin bets he can win. Even as commodities analysts report that many of Rosneft and Lukoil’s biggest customers in India and China are canceling orders and seeking oil from non-Russian sources, other market players are busy finding ways to circumvent the latest sanctions. The markets doubt that Trump can keep the 4.4 million barrels a day exported by those Russian companies from flowing. The futures price of Brent Crude oil, for instance, ticked up 3 percent after the announcement, but has since sunk close to the pre-sanctions level.

    “If you really remove that much oil from the market, you will have a huge price spike [that] Trump won’t tolerate,” says Ben Aris of media company Business New Europe. “Midterm elections are not that far away. Oil experts say it will only take a few months for the Russians, Chinese and Indians to find some sort of workaround. They have in every case of new sanctions so far.”

    Russia undoubtedly faces further economic pain as the war continues. But Ukraine’s economy, and indeed its ability to finance its war effort at all, is in far worse shape. The Trump administration has pulled funding, and Europe’s promise to raise a reparations loan backed by frozen Russian assets remains in legal limbo.

    One thing is certain. Winter is coming, and it will be much more painful for Ukraine than it will be for Russia. Those who predict that the pressures of war will collapse Ukraine and those who say the same of Russia are both right. The only difference is the timeline. Putin remains convinced that his economy, his people and his soldiers can take whatever he asks of them – and hold out longer than their enemies in Kyiv.

    This article was originally published in The Spectator’s November 10, 2025 World edition.

  • Is Putin stringing Trump along with the promise of a Budapest summit?

    Is Putin stringing Trump along with the promise of a Budapest summit?

    Sorry, Volodymyr. There won’t be any Tomahawk missiles headed to Ukraine now that  President Vladimir Putin of Russia has talked on the phone with President Donald Trump, who called their session “very productive.”  

    What it will produce remains an open question. But it does seem to have resulted in a decision to hold an upcoming summit in Budapest. The bottom line: Putin has outflanked Ukrainian President Zelensky, who will meet at the White House with Trump tomorrow. 

    Trump is a transactional president and he has business that he wants to transact with Russia, including, but not limited to, a peace deal between it and Ukraine. If anything, Trump, intent on winning the Nobel Peace Prize that eluded him this year, appears to be on the verge of becoming a foreign-policy president. He’s hopscotching around the globe, trying to solve conflicts, wherever and whenever he can. Whether they are truly solved is another matter. For Trump the art of the deal is to secure one, no matter how precarious it may appear. Then move on to the next zone of conflict. 

    For Zelensky, Putin’s missive could not come at a worse time. Ukraine has been bathing in the warmer rays emanating from the Trump White House to it. Trump has repeatedly voiced his frustration with “Vladimir,” as he likes to call him, for refusing to end the war. Now Putin is once more dangling the bait of a ceasefire at the very moment that he is pounding Ukraine’s energy infrastructure in preparation for what looks to be a very cold winter indeed. 

    Zelensky had been hoping to persuade Trump to up his game and confront Russia more openly. Since the Alaska summit, Trump has approved further cooperation between American and Ukrainian intelligence services, ensuring that they receive better targeting information to hit Russian energy infrastructure. But acceding to Tomahawk missiles, which can reach deep into Russia, would have escalated the conflict, particularly with the Kremlin threatening that it would erase the barrier to the nuclear threshold. Anyone who doesn’t get a case of the collywobbles from confronting that prospect should head directly to the local cinema and watch the new and sparkling film, A House of Dynamite, which offers a timely reminder of the destruction that one warhead can deliver. 

    Here’s hoping that Trump can forge some kind of viable agreement between the two sides, one that could lead to further cooperation on the nuclear arms-control front, where most of the agreements forged during and after the Cold War lie in tatters. Putin’s track record, of course, should hardly inspire much confidence. A master of the tactical move, the Russian President may well have intervened simply to stymie Trump from delivering more potent weapons to Ukraine. 

    Zelensky will be on his best behavior in meeting in Washington with a president who is desperate to reach some kind of accommodation with Putin. Throughout, Zelensky would do well to make favorable noises about peace and allow Putin to once more emerge as the recalcitrant party. It is Putin, and Putin alone, who has steadily been saying nyet to ending the conflict in his mad desire to reestablish the Russian empire of yore.

  • No, Trump has not changed course on Ukraine

    President Trump has once again played the global foreign-policy commentariat for fools. They have taken a startling statement from Trump’s Truth social-media account on Tuesday as a sign of a new policy – or at least a new attitude – toward the Russia-Ukraine war. Yet what Trump actually wrote says nothing of the sort. 

    If Trump really were newly committing himself to Ukraine, why would say, as he’s so often said before, “I wish both countries well”? One country has invaded the other; wishing one of them well means wishing defeat on the other. Wishing them both well indicates indifference.

    At a stretch, one might choose to believe Trump meant his kind regards to both sides as a mere pleasantry, or perhaps he meant that sub specie aeternitatis he wishes the people of both nations well. His record belies that interpretation. So does the rest of what he wrote Tuesday.

    Trump’s Truth statement came on the heels of a meeting with Ukraine’s President Zelenskyy in New York. The Ukrainian leader accentuated the positive: “Trump is a game-changer by himself,” he said. Yet Trump’s words describe a very familiar game, played by the rules Trump has followed all along.

    If anything, he has reiterated more forcefully before that Ukraine is Europe’s affair, not America’s. Look closely. “I think Ukraine, with the support of the European Union, is in a position to fight and WIN all of Ukraine back in its original form.”

    That means if Ukraine falls short of that optimistic conclusion, it will be the EU’s fault, along with Zelenskyy’s – but not America’s.

    “With time, patience, and the financial support of Europe and, in particular, NATO, the original Borders from where this War started, is very much an option.” 

    The US is, of course, part of NATO, but near the end of the post, Trump adds this in clarification: “We will continue to supply weapons to NATO for NATO to do what they want with them.”

    That hardly sounds like the United States asserting its leadership role in the alliance to direct greater aid to Ukraine. It’s instead a restatement of an existing policy (“we will continue”) and a reminder that Trump sees Europe’s NATO members as being responsible for their own decisions (“do what they want with them”) and whatever results they get – or don’t get.

    Trump emphasized to Vladimir Putin that his war is a failure and an economic catastrophe, and the administration’s disappointment with Russia’s intransigence in prolonging the war is no secret. Despite what his detractors may believe, Trump did not come back into office intent upon delivering Ukraine to Putin. If a negotiated peace, or at least armistice, is not available, Trump is quite comfortable keeping up military aid of the sort the US has been providing all along. Yet his Truth post suggests even that will increasingly be framed in terms of Europeans’ self-responsibility. This is their war, and theirs to end, where Trump is concerned.

    NATO’s Eurocrats should think twice before popping the champagne. If Trump sounds more sanguine than ever before about total victory for Ukraine, what will he say about Europe, and NATO, if that happy ending doesn’t come to pass? Will he say Europe, including NATO, lost a war that should have been easy to win and thereby proved its uselessness – proved, in fact, the need for regime-change in Europe’s own capitals and for America to slash its underwriting of the Continent’s defense? Trump has now set extremely high expectations for others to meet. You can be sure he hasn’t done so unwittingly.

    Trump doesn’t want to see Ukraine utterly crushed by Russia. Yet he also doesn’t want NATO to be America’s business rather than Europe’s. Business is about profit, and in Trump’s eyes, NATO is unprofitable. For now the president is providing charity; he’s a generous man. But if NATO’s European members can’t realize the returns that Trump says are attainable, he’s going to curtail his giving.

  • Why is Putin probing Poland with drones?

    Provocation, mistake, or something in between? Either Putin sent Russian drones into Poland’s airspace on Tuesday night to test Nato’s reaction, or Ukrainian electronic jamming scrambled the targeting systems on Russian drones and sent them haywire. Or perhaps the Kremlin is playing a grey-zone game, launching an accidentally-on-purpose attack to push Europe’s boundaries. 

    Whatever Putin’s intent, the shooting down of several drones marks the first time ever that Nato warplanes have engaged and destroyed Russian weapons in European airspace. Though Polish prime minister Donald Tusk noted that “there is no reason to claim that we are in a state of war” he did call the incursion “significantly more dangerous than all previous ones” and warned that a military conflict with Russia is “closer than at any time since the second world war.”

    The problem with the Kremlin testing the boundaries theory is that it doesn’t make much political or military sense. Poland’s relations with Ukraine are already souring, which is exactly how the Kremlin wants it. Just days ago Polish President Karol Nawrocki said that he believed that Ukraine’s accession to Nato should be “postponed” because of the risk of automatically involving allies in a conflict with Russia. He added that discussions about Ukraine’s EU membership were “premature,” stressing that such processes “require time and the consideration of economic factors.” Decoded, Nawrocki fears that Poland’s agricultural sector will be undercut by cheap Ukrainian produce, and Kyiv will receive all the EU subsidies that currently go to Warsaw. Poland also recently ended most benefits payments to Ukrainian refugees settled in its territory. 

    Why, when relations between Poland and Ukraine are heading into choppy waters, would Putin wish to rekindle their solidarity by attacking Polish territory directly? 

    Militarily, too, it’s not clear what the purpose of a deliberate Russian “probing attack” might be. The drones seem to have flown in different directions, one ending up 275 kilometres into Polish territory toward Warsaw while the others were shot down around Rzesow in the south-east of the country. A true test of Poland’s air defense would presumably involve a concentrated attack on a specific target. And Shahed drones – and their Russian-made clones, known as Geran – are a strange way to test defenses as they are notoriously slow and heavy, unlike Russian cruise missiles or indeed hypersonic rockets like the nuclear-capable Kinzhal. The military utility of Shahed attacks is to overwhelm air defense batteries by sheer force of numbers, relying on just 10 or 20 percent of the drone swarm getting through. 

    The problem with the Kremlin testing the boundaries theory is that it doesn’t make much political or military sense

    Another piece of evidence that the incursion may not have been deliberate are reports indicating that after the drones went Awol into Polish airspace some Russian strategic bombers aborted their missions, returning to base without launching their cruise missiles against Ukrainian targets. If true, it could suggest that Russian commanders were wary of escalating the war beyond Ukrainian territory.

    This week Russia and Belarus are about to commence scheduled joint military exercise dubbed Zapad-2025, designed to test their response to a western attack on Russia. For decades, the annual ritual of the Zapad war-games have been a moment of heightened tension for Poland and the Baltic states. To deliberately stage a serious provocation against Nato on the eve of the exercise would be a reckless and foolish move by the Kremlin. But then again the whole full-scale invasion of Ukraine was in itself a massive act of recklessness and folly. 

    What is clear is that Putin is very serious about smashing Ukraine’s energy and transport infrastructure before winter sets in. The massive swarms of missiles and drones that Russia has been sending almost nightly set new records for their scale. A major target seems to be military supply hubs for Nato materiel around Lviv, Lutsk and Rivne – all close to Ukraine’s border with Poland. 

    In the wake of the drone incursion Tusk invoked Nato’s Article Four for only the seventh time since the alliance was founded, calling on allies to “consult” in case of a threat. That will be an important test of Donald Trump’s attitude to Nato. Last week Trump had said that “we are with Poland all the way and we will help Poland protect itself.” Blasting Nato’s European members as free riders has been a long-time Trump talking point. But in July EU leaders pledged to up their contributions to 5 percent of GDP – and Nato’s secretary general Mark Rutte called Trump “Daddy.” Whether this has fundamentally changed Trump’s attitude to Nato remains to be seen.  

    European Commission president Ursula von der Leyen in her State of the Union address vowed that Europe would apply “more pressure on Russia to come to the negotiating table. We need more sanctions.” France’s Emmanuel Macron called the airspace violation “simply unacceptable… We will not compromise on the safety of our allies.” But so far nothing that Nato, or Europe, has done so far has succeeded in deterring Putin or swerving him from his systematic campaign to crush Ukraine. 

  • Can Friedrich Merz save Germany from irrelevancy?

    Can Friedrich Merz save Germany from irrelevancy?

    Friedrich Merz arrived in Washington this week alongside Europe’s most senior leaders, ostensibly to coordinate the continent’s response to Trump’s Ukraine designs. Here was Germany’s moment to demonstrate the leadership it perpetually claims to seek – a chance to shape the conversation that will determine Europe’s security architecture for years to come. Instead, before the Chancellor could even present his case to Americans, his own foreign minister Johann Wadephul delivered a masterclass in diplomatic self-sabotage from Berlin.

    Germany must play “an important role” in any future peacekeeping mission in Ukraine, declared the CDU politician, before categorically ruling out German soldiers on Ukrainian soil. “That would presumably overwhelm us,” he explained with the sort of defeatist precision that has become his government’s signature. In a single sentence, Wadephul had kneecapped his own Chancellor’s negotiating position, advertising Germany’s limitations rather than its capabilities to anyone listening.

    Nothing feeds populists like politics’ inability to address change

    This wasn’t merely unfortunate timing – it was the latest installment in a pattern of cabinet colleagues undermining Merz’s already tentative efforts at international leadership. Whether on defense spending, migration policy or economic reform, the Chancellor finds himself repeatedly ambushed by ministers who seem determined to advertise Germany’s unwillingness to shoulder serious responsibilities. One might call it capitulation before the first battle was fought, but this represents something more systematic: the crystallization of a political culture that has made strategic irrelevance into an art form.

    Here lies the exquisite tragedy of modern Germany: a nation trapped between its aspirations and its neuroses, too large to be irrelevant yet too terrified to actually lead. While Merz and other European leaders huddle in the White House, desperately hoping to dissuade Trump from striking a deal at Kyiv’s expense, political Berlin sends its familiar signal: Yes, we speak of responsibility. No, we won’t actually take it.

    The coalition has made itself thoroughly comfortable in this culture of irresponsibility. Vice Chancellor Lars Klingbeil offered a textbook example of political evasion in his recent television interview, declaring that “naturally we must also assume responsibility as Europeans when it comes to security guarantees.” Whether this involves troops, training, money or something else entirely “must all be clarified in the coming days.” What sounds like commitment is actually an escape hatch – the political equivalent of agreeing to meet for lunch “sometime soon.”

    Few politicians dare acknowledge the challenges that Russian imperial ambition actually poses to Germany. CDU foreign policy expert Roderich Kiesewetter represents a rare voice of clarity, reminding his colleague Wadephul that European peace cannot be guaranteed without military backing – including ground troops if necessary. Germany, Kiesewetter argues, cannot lead from Central Europe whilst simultaneously refusing engagement where it matters. The mathematics are brutal but simple: you cannot exercise leadership whilst advertising your unwillingness to pay its price. Yet this is precisely Germany’s chosen strategy, demanding a seat at the top table whilst openly declaring vast swathes of policy off-limits.

    Chancellor Merz understands that Germany cannot define its role through economic power alone. Since taking office, he has tentatively begun moving Germany back towards leadership responsibility. But the resistance is formidable – within his own party, throughout the coalition, and amongst a public that has grown comfortable with foreign policy free-riding. The result is that Germany is stuck in an interstitial position: too significant to be ignored, too anxious to genuinely lead. Whilst Washington discusses Ukraine’s and Europe’s future, Berlin resembles a spectator at its own continent’s strategic deliberations. It wanted to be an actor yet seems content remaining in the audience.

    This dysfunction extends far beyond foreign policy. The coalition’s domestic paralysis mirrors its international timidity. When asked about the government’s future direction, Klingbeil couldn’t even feign enthusiasm for his own coalition. Rather than articulating any compelling vision, he made clear that he views this partnership as little more than a marriage of convenience – one held together primarily by fear of the far-right Alternative für Deutschland party (AfD). Defining oneself solely in opposition to populists represents political dwarfism of the highest order. Those serious about defeating populism cannot practice politics purely ex negativo. They must offer positive alternatives, compelling visions, genuine leadership. Instead, Klingbeil offered warmed-over social democratic orthodoxy: higher taxes for high earners.

    But lack of revenue isn’t Germany’s problem. Rather, astronomical debt and a bloated welfare state burden the republic with obligations that will eventually crush future generations. Precisely when populists will find their richest hunting grounds. If Klingbeil genuinely wants to defeat populism, he must confront Germans with uncomfortable truths: they will need to work more and longer to save the pension system. Social spending must be cut – the state cannot continue housing every applicant in city centers. Real change requires discomfort for those who have arranged their lives at public expense.

    Klingbeil should also cease attacking coalition partners who dare speak inconvenient truths. When Trade Minister Katherina Reiche recently demanded Germans work harder, this wasn’t pandering to the right – it was acknowledging a bitter reality. The coalition catastrophically underestimates German citizens by assuming they cannot handle genuine reforms. The necessary cuts would be entirely explicable. Everyone understands that deterring Russia carries costs. Everyone can calculate that fewer young workers cannot indefinitely finance more retirees’ pensions. This requires basic arithmetic, not advanced mathematics.

    The irony is exquisite: by merely managing stagnation, the coalition achieves precisely what Klingbeil claims to oppose. Nothing feeds populists like politics’ inability to address change. If the Union and SPD continue this path, they can watch the AfD overtake them in the next election. Germany’s predicament extends beyond coalition politics to a fundamental crisis of strategic imagination. The country that once produced visionaries like Adenauer and Erhard, the architects of post-war European integration, now struggles to articulate any coherent vision of its role in a rapidly changing world.

    This matters far beyond Germany’s borders. Europe desperately needs German leadership as it confronts Russian aggression, Chinese economic warfare, and American strategic uncertainty. Instead, it receives hesitation, half-measures and the perpetual promise that someone else will handle the difficult decisions. The tragedy is that Germany possesses the resources, influence and historical experience necessary for genuine leadership. What it lacks is the political courage to embrace the responsibilities that leadership entails. Until Berlin overcomes its preference for strategic irrelevance over strategic engagement, Europe will remain dangerously dependent on powers whose interests may not align with European security.

    Germany’s choice is stark: lead or become irrelevant. The current strategy of wanting influence without responsibility represents the worst of both worlds and is a recipe for strategic marginalization disguised as pragmatic restraint. The question is whether German politicians will recognize this reality before their nation’s window for meaningful leadership closes entirely. Current evidence suggests they may prefer the comfort of managed decline to the challenges of actual leadership. If so, Germany’s partners should plan accordingly.

  • Zelensky dresses up and avoids dressing-down

    Zelensky dresses up and avoids dressing-down

    Not since Barack Obama held a press conference dressed as the Man from Del Monte has a suit played such a critical role in US politics. But there it was, after the spring press conference incident, President Zelensky arrived in Washington, DC wearing a suit. The “YMCA”-loving Trump administration is hardly batting off the accusations of campness given its fixation with menswear. Still, Zelensky came, as did all of Europe. 

    All the handshakes went off without a hitch, although the size difference meant that the visuals were slightly more redolent of vaudeville than high diplomatic drama. Zelensky handed a letter from his wife to the First Lady, thanking her for her intervention on behalf of Ukraine’s missing children. During Trump’s monologues on foreign policy he has often let slip that his wife has been a driving influence in favor of a more compassionate attitude towards Ukraine. Whether the Secret Service can deliver it to the right Melania remains to be seen.

    Trump specializes in the diplomatic theater of the absurd: Samuel Beckett meets Metternich meets the cast of Jersey Shore. He duly boasted of solving “six wars in six months,” including in a place he called the Republic of the Condo – which sounds like a pseudonym for Florida. This was a press conference through the looking glass. 

    Meanwhile the President kept his audience guessing: “We have great people up here,” he said, gesturing at the assembled press pack. “We also have terrible people.” Nobody does scattered insults quite like Trump – he makes the Gatling Gun look like a close-range precision missile. 

    He treated Zelensky to a long and very involved monologue about the virtues of paper ballots – by far the lengthiest answer of the day. It was a bit like one of those sections you have to skip in a Victorian novel, as when Anthony Trollope does one of his three-chapter sequences about a fox hunt or spends 100 pages waxing lyrical about checks. 

    In the midst of this, the President insisted that only America uses paper ballots. For all his comedy it is worth remembering that Trump includes provable untruths in most of his monologues. Of course it isn’t only America which uses mail-in ballots. As ever, Trump’s press conference was like watching a mime show. It was wild, confusing and seemingly irrelevant at times, and yet when it was over you had a sense that you’d seen something impressive.

    All in all, as good as it could be expected for Ukraine. J.D. Vance – unusually silent today – had apparently been neutered and, for all the Trumpian weirdness, the exchanges yielded a more concrete level of support than last time. On security, said Trump, “there’s going to be a lot of help, we will be involved.” 

    For now, at least, it seemed President Zelensky had figured out the winning formula; nod, smile and say as little as possible.

  • Why Vladimir Putin wants Donetsk

    Will Ukraine’s fate depend on Sloviansk and Kramatorsk, Druzhkivka and Kostiantynivka? These may not be household names, but they are the four key “fortress cities” in the remaining portions of Donetsk region that Vladimir Putin is reportedly demanding as the price for peace.

    Although the details are still unclear, it seems that the framework for a peace deal agreed in outline between Putin and Trump would see the Russians agreeing to freeze the current front line. They could maybe even hand back some small sections of the Sumy and Kharkiv regions they have conquered in return for Kyiv surrendering the much larger portion of Donetsk region it still holds.

    This would be a bitter pill to swallow on so many levels. It is not just that the area in question – around 30 percent of the region, over 6,000 square miles – is so much larger than the territory which would be liberated in Trump’s vaunted “swap.” It is also because of its strategic value. Within that region lies the so-called “fortress belt,” made up of the aforementioned well-defended cities and several other towns and settlements running north to south along the N-20 Kostyantynivka-Slovyansk highway.

    Given that Kyiv would inevitably and understandably fear some renewed Russian aggression, whatever the terms of any deal, it becomes all the more important for them to have those defensive lines on their side of the front line. Besides, this is territory now soaked in the blood of thousands of Ukrainian soldiers and also of symbolic importance: Slovyansk is the city seized by Russian nationalist Igor “Strelkov” Girkin when, in his own words, he “pulled the trigger” on the risings that generated the undeclared war in the Donbas that in due course led to the 2022 invasion. In those circumstances there may even be some question as to whether the military would even accept orders to withdraw.

    Territorial conquest was never Putin’s real objective, so much as the subjugation of Ukraine

    Nonetheless, Putin does seem to have reshaped the debate. By making it about whether or not this surrender is acceptable, he has in effect made the West acknowledge that the existing occupied territories are lost. Perhaps some day, whether through military or political means, they may be regained, but there is no credible theory of victory that sees Kyiv regaining them in the foreseeable future that does not rest on some unlikely deus ex machina like a Russian economic collapse or Putin’s imminent demise. Besides, Putin’s line is presumably that ultimately this territory is lost to Kyiv anyway – whether it takes a month, a year, or longer, someday his forces will grind their bloody way through the fortress belt. A refusal to deal now just means more death and misery all round before the inevitable.

    Putin may be wrong and may prove willing to abandon this demand, but he will not do so easily or cheaply. Territorial conquest was never Putin’s real objective, so much as the subjugation of Ukraine. Given that he never anticipated that he was getting himself into a major, expensive and open-ended war though, Putin may be willing to take a deal that he can still trumpet as a triumph at home. However, Ukraine may also feel it wins a victory of sorts if it is able to gain the kind of meaningful security guarantees and reconstruction assistance to become a truly sovereign, democratic and stable nation, outside Moscow’s sphere of influence.

    This, after all, is where the really difficult negotiations are likely to remain. That chunk of Donetsk matters, but it is the environment in which Ukrainians will rebuild their country that will be crucial. Putin will want to leave them undefended and divided (indeed, a small part of the reason for his demand for Donetsk is precisely to force Zelensky either to doom his people to more war or take a monstrously unpopular decision in the name of peace). 

    The question is how far Ukraine’s allies are willing to offer those serious and credible guarantees and to force Putin to swallow them. They may be tempted to stick to their hollow mantras that “Putin cannot be allowed to win.” Ukrainians, fighting at the front and hiding from Russian drones in air-raid shelters, have every right to choose to hold out and resist any such ugly deal. Given that Ukraine’s European allies are clearly (and rightly) unwilling to put their own soldiers directly into harm’s way, though, you could question the morality of their seeking to encourage Zelensky to stand firm simply to avoid confronting the grubby moral compromises peace would demand.

  • The Alaska summit went much as expected

    The summit between Presidents Donald Trump and Vladimir Putin ended predictably, without a ceasefire deal or, it seems, assent on much else. Trump said “Many points were agreed to, and there are just a very few that are left,” but failed to offer any details. Even if true, the leftovers are critical, and the gulf between the two governments on the war remains huge. Critically, Putin cares more about security than image or economics, and understandably believes that he would lose leverage by agreeing to halt military operations before winning the concessions he demands from Ukraine.

    Nevertheless, the summit improved, however slightly, the prospects for negotiating an end to the war. With Moscow on the offensive, a peace that preserves Ukrainian sovereignty and independence requires that Kyiv talk with the Putin government. Diplomacy has stirred, however ineptly. Necessary now is getting Ukraine and Russia to negotiate, while encouraging both to be realistic. To end a conflict that is costing both sides dearly, Kyiv will have to lose territory and endure neutrality, while Moscow should accept a Ukraine that leans West politically and economically, though not militarily. Since battlefield success may have emboldened Putin, Trump should use the prospect of improving political relations and economic dealings with the West in an attempt to pull Moscow toward a compromise capable of delivering a stable peace.

  • Vladimir Putin was the real winner of the Alaska summit

    Vladimir Putin was the real winner of the Alaska summit

    Vladimir Putin couldn’t stop smiling at the spectacle awaiting him in Anchorage yesterday, as American soldiers knelt to adjust a red carpet rolled out from his presidential plane. Donald Trump applauded as the Russian President walked towards him under the roar of fighter jets and stepped onto American soil for the first time in a decade. The pair shook hands for the cameras, ignoring a journalist who shouted, “Mr. Putin, will you stop killing civilians?” before riding off together in the presidential limo to the summit site. A royal reception, not a ceasefire, was what the international pariah had come out of his bunker for.

    Putin emerged from international isolation and was welcomed as a king rather than as an indicted war criminal

    After almost three hours of negotiations, Trump left Alaska with neither peace nor a deal. The lunch between the two delegations was canceled. The brief press conference allowed no questions from the media. A seemingly energetic Putin gave an eight-minute speech on the history of Alaska while Trump stared blankly into the void. On Ukraine, Putin called it a “brotherly nation,” hypocritically claiming that “everything that’s happening is a tragedy for us, a terrible wound.” He then repeated the need to eliminate the “root causes” of the war, signaling that Russia’s demands for Ukraine’s capitulation have not shifted.

    Yet there still seemed to be some sort of an agreement taking shape behind closed doors. Putin said he expected Kyiv and European capitals “will perceive it constructively and won’t throw a wrench in the works.” Trump said that “many points were agreed” and announced later in a Fox News interview that now it was up to Volodymyr Zelensky to “get it done.” Trump added that Ukraine would have to make territorial concessions, though Kyiv may not agree because Joe Biden “handed out money like it was candy.” Asked what advice he would give to Zelensky, Trump said: “Make a deal. Russia is a very big power. And they [the Ukrainians] are not.”

    Putin left the summit having achieved the goals he came for. He emerged from international isolation and was welcomed as a king rather than as an indicted war criminal. He left with plenty of photos alongside Trump for the Kremlin propaganda wing to talk about and contrast with pictures of Trump lecturing a humiliated Zelensky in the Oval Office in February. Russia also avoided further sanctions despite rejecting a ceasefire, with Trump promising once again that he might think about it in another “two or three weeks.”

    As for Trump, he has nothing to show for the meeting except for being laughed at in Russia and at home. Had there been progress, he would already be boasting about it, but he knows too little about the conflict he is trying to fix, and the stick he carried was too short to make Putin care. The summit labeled “Pursuing Peace” failed to achieve even a partial ceasefire. No trilateral meeting with Zelensky has been agreed. The war will grind on, soldiers will keep dying and Russia will continue bombing Ukrainian cities. All Trump has to offer is his refrain to Ukraine: make a deal – whatever that means.